waterblogged

How can I explain it? I take it frame by frame it. The raft race of old ... a tradition in my hometown during an annual festival. The festival survives, the race is no longer, but having been in it a few times, I will explain or sum up. The race was cancelled years ago due to lack of effective sponsorship.
--background on the river--
The river -- dirty from the many northern towns and cities enters my city and it then mixed into 2 other rivers. The primary pollutants are metal toxins and toxins used in metal working. Mixed in with that are detergents and fertilizer. The addition of fecal matter doesn't make it any deadlier, just grosser. The race starts where there is a dam, set mid to low level during the summers. Generally speaking the rivers tend to be low at this time. The sandy rocky bottom is replaced by debris shortly after the dam. A few radio stations would put in the largest dough to make it happen -- prize money and permits. The racers were to put together a craft of their own design, good, bad, tacky or great. No canoes were allowed. Understandably they disallowed alcohol on any craft. They also disallowed the following weapons, which never made sense: water balloons, water cannons, water guns. Considering environmentally, plastic from water balloons I would understand, but the others -- no, sir. The theory was that the racers weren't supposed to get the crowd wet, but the crowd could drop water and water balloons on them. Crazy, nonsensical. In the early days of its inception there was the theory of a race, being that the early entrants had a weak advantage over the later ones. There were $250 and $500 prizes for winning the race; 2nd place, most creative; best use of radio station call letters; and a couple of other categories. In the mid or early 80s, the event stopped being a race and was reduced to an event, but still with prize money awarded for the above. In the early 90s, they stopped awarding prize money, but it was fun to enter into the event. Here' are some of my memories... (dates and years are all mixed within)The craft was plywood on plywood nailed to 2x4s with barrels strung onto the bottom. It weighed about 9 million pounds; I hardly believed that it floated. It was my first experience in the race and it was typically summer, 94 degrees, humid and mixed between dragon breath wind and airlessness. Getting the thing down the embankment, along the narrow strip of rocks and sand, dodging the other craft already moored as it were, to the first open spot. There are many bends in the river, so you really have no idea of the length that you'll travel. Our crew of six was outfitted with required preservers that made paddling difficult. This craft wasn't fancy, it was -- a raft, pieced together a little better than Cuban flotillas. We packed on the raft... bottoming it out. The race began with a PA announcement that we didn't hear. We saw other craft going, so we went through the thickly packed mess of the start. It was like alpha bits in milk ... congested, when one moved three others replaced it. I believe that there were 111 craft that year packed into a pharmacy parking lot space. When we finally got deep enough we noticed that the splash boards or "paddles" were only modestly better than our hands for paddling. Our goal was in the direction of the river with hundreds ahead of us. Here we could see the more sophisticated models -- space shuttle, radio van, heavy metal black box raft, frilly pink girly raft, PT-109 looking raft, and others. Not having seats, we sat on our legs, our knees painfully bent. [stroke] and within 20 minutes we have traveled 20 feet. [stroke] We were under a bridge in 40 some minutes with passersby splashing us, taunting us and the crowd cheering us all. [stroke]. A crystalline line, cone, wave, like a snake flew over our heads. Someone on the land was firing at us. [stroke] [splat] My sister got it! [stroke] It was an hour and we were all ready to quit. The thrill had nearly passed over us when, bombs away!
* "They're using artillery on us!"
Water balloons directly ahead of us, coming from the bridge, from the land, from other boats and rafts. Most didn't break. [Splash! Splash! Splash!] Splashing was coming from not only the balloons, but also the paddles and oars of other rafts ... [splash!]

(switching times) I remember here, our castle raft was faltering. We had put together a great colossus of a raft. It could hold twelve people, and out front it had an island where the working drawbridge would drop. The river made the moat. It was great, but it was leaking. From the pace of our sinking at least two barrels were taking water, one had half filled. The raft wasn’t going to make the entire trip. With a small pout, I jumped into the still busy start of the race.
Abandon ship! We leapt off like rats, leaving only Scott and Greg, who were doing something we couldn’t understand. I would like to say we hijacked the raft with painted handprints, operated by the girls, but they obliged us in our plight. This was actually a ruse to ditch theirs. They had spotted “guys” on another raft and left theirs for that one, so that they didn’t have to paddle anymore. It was an awkward win-win scenario.
They were wise enough to have paddles. We saw Greg finally leave the raft then head toward a shore. Scott had since then joined us on the raft and was non-too-pleased to be exiled. He took it in stride. About another hour later, Greg launched himself from a shore and swam to our raft.
He had removed the numbers indicating the entry – no number, no identity. We had conspired to sabotage our own river – shameful. We felt no shame as the city then had the equipment to haul the bugger from the drink. It went to the front end of the bridge and stayed there for about a week.
We were now on the river making progress, time in: 2.25 hours and we had 45 minutes until we would be done. We were quite tired. As there were no restroom spots and being soaked, then drinking water gives nature a call, you put yourself into the river to assist you. At this episode we had to walk the raft, as the water was low on the side. Here Scott got a mouthful of the crud. Later that day he would develop an illness that I think lasted a week. As a testament to this foulness, dead carp were on the surface in some areas. If carp die – people would too.
MR found a camera on the raft. We later had to keep it from falling into the river. We put it in the cooler on the raft. Sadly, it too was filled with water. That was shameful!
At the end we saw the girls there. They somewhat remembered us and that we had their raft. Hauling the waterlogged, raft from the river after hours of rowing, was like pushing a shopping mall, because it was a little off center from the foundation. No one, and I mean no one smelled anything other than foul! Cerpicio’s father, I think, helped us load it onto a truck, expecting ours, but ours was elsewhere.
Each participant had to wear the raft race shirt. Each shirt, after being soaked in the river water was never again white. Yummy! Thankfully the city has an effective water cleaning system.

Monkeyjack has a picture somewhere of our raft … on board one trip were Cerpicio, Monkeyjack, Scott, MR, TS, ISJ, Greg, Bob, Rob, (another person) and myself…. I think that was it.

On a different trip, I was thrown a beer. While tempted, I didn’t drink it, later passing it off to someone on the land. I was warned by the police boat to not be swimming – yea. What fun! Swimming with a preserver in a toxic river – gosh, why can’t I go swimming here? Doofus!